Erin Foster
Research Data Management Program Service Lead
University of California, Berkeley
Anna Sackmann
Data Services Librarian
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley historically lagged behind peer institutions in research data storage, offering 200 GB per faculty member while peers provided 5-30 TB. Faculty turned to ad hoc, insecure storage practices, and appealed to campus to take action. In response, campus IT, research IT, and the Library launched a Data Storage for Faculty Pilot, offering 5 TB per faculty across five existing storage platforms. This coordinated offering delivers secure, compliant storage, reduces reliance on personal systems, and supports large-scale research needs. By aligning platforms, policies, and curation support, the initiative closes Berkeley’s storage gap, strengthens data integrity and compliance, and advances a future-oriented ecosystem that protects research, amplifies scholarly impact through responsible sharing, and fosters sustained campus partnerships. Speakers will cover how the campus partnerships developed for this pilot across these three IT organizations. Each partner brings their own areas of expertise to effectively knit together distinct service offerings into a constellation of services to be managed holistically to meet research needs: general purpose storage using an S3-compatible API, collaboration storage for desktop usage, computational storage integrated with HPC environments (including secure storage for high-risk data), and data sharing and publishing platforms. The pilot intentionally includes opportunities for faculty to engage with research data consultants, primarily from the library, as they make decisions on how to allocate their 5TB of storage. Consultants advise on which storage offerings best support the needs of not only the data, but the overall research process. These informative conversations with faculty demonstrate the variety of data management needs at the institution. These consultations will inform the University’s future approach to supporting the whole research data lifecycle and improve the faculty research experience.
